The Business Association of Latin American Studies

BALAS 2011

Value Creation through Innovation: Latin America's Unavoidable Challenge
2011 BALAS Annual Conference
13th-15th April 2011, Santiago, Chile
Hosted by UAI Business School

Program Chair: Mauricio Villena

Over the last decade, innovation has been recognized as a key concept to promote value creation within the firm and subsequently for long-term economic growth. Nevertheless, moving from awareness to action, creating a pro-innovation environment is proving to be an extremely difficult and complex endeavor. There are many challenges associated with being able to develop successful innovation capabilities: creating new competitive spaces, changing a firm's culture, redfining best practices, finding the correct government incentives, developing appropriate financial schemes, to name jut a few. The need to develop a pro-innovation environment is an extremely pressing necessity that results in great challenges for governments, the private sector, and universities. The Conference focused on this theme as well as other papers and discussions related to the business and economic environment in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Almost 200 papers were submitted to the 2011 BALAS conference, of which approximately 90 were accepted for presentation. In addition the conference featured invited panels and speakers such as Dr. Fernando Flores (below), former Minister of Finance and currently the President of Chile's National Innovation Council for Competitiveness.